Supreme Court Splits on Executive Power: Cook Ruling Is a Narrow Win, Slaughter Gives Trump Sweeping Removal Authority Over Independent Agencies

The Supreme Court has drawn two very different lines on executive power, and the critical one—the Slaughter ruling—strikes at the heart of the post-New Deal regulatory structure. By a 6-3 vote, the Court overruled the 1935 precedent Humphrey's Executor, which had protected the independence of multi-member agencies like the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and CFPB. Now, every commissioner at those agencies serves at the president's pleasure. This is not an abstract constitutional debate: it means an administration can fire any commissioner who votes to enforce consumer protections, labor rights, or net neutrality, and replace them with loyalists who will do the president's bidding. The Court's opinion, available at supremecourt.gov, makes clear that independent agencies are not constitutionally 'independent' from presidential control—a position that flatly contradicts Congress's intent to insulate regulators from partisan interference.

Importantly, the Cook ruling offers no structural comfort. While Cook herself stays in her job, the 5-4 majority did not uphold the Federal Reserve's unique statutory insulation as a broad principle. As the Court's own opinion states, the decision turned on a procedural due process issue: Trump did not give Cook pre-termination notice and an opportunity to respond before firing her. The Court explicitly declined to decide whether a president may ever fire a Fed governor 'for cause'—meaning the next president could simply provide notice and do what Trump attempted. The outcome for Cook is a temporary reprieve, not a constitutional guardrail.

For the public, the Slaughter ruling is the far more consequential harm. It removes the legal barrier that has protected agencies like the NLRB (which enforces workers' right to organize) and the FTC (which polices monopolies and consumer fraud) from becoming arms of the White House political apparatus. Congress intended these agencies to be shielded from day-to-day presidential pressure. That is now gone. The only path to restoring some democratic accountability lies in legislative action—codifying removal protections for agency heads through new statutes, or, more ambitiously, amending the Administrative Procedure Act to require cause for firing commissioners. But with the current makeup of Congress, such reform is a distant hope. The Constitution's separation of powers assumes agencies will sometimes push back against the president; after Slaughter, that pushback is a firing offense.

This is not a split decision that balances competing values. It is a severe blow to the architecture of independent regulation, dressed up with a narrow win for one person on a narrow procedural question. The real-world stakes: workers lose protection from arbitrary NLRB turnover, consumers lose FTC enforcement independence, and the principle that expertise not loyalty should guide regulators is effectively abandoned for most of the federal government.